Setting the Table

Over the years, I’ve had the privilege of officiating at worship services at nursing homes. Especially when Holy Eucharist was part of the service, those gatherings gave me greater clarity about my own call to ministry and about the power of the sacraments.

Often the worshippers in those congregations battled dementia. Let’s just say that I wasn’t sure my brilliant homiletic points were having much effect. But I found that when I wove Psalm 23 into the liturgy, as maybe the most well known psalm of all, even worshippers in some other world could recite the words, a witness to the power of holy writ.

You may have heard this psalm in church yesterday. It’s printed above. I invite you to reflect on it this week and to try to do so as if you’d not heard it before.

I tried that this past week, and focused on the phrase “You spread a table before me in the presence of those who trouble me.” It reminded me of another verse from the psalms, one often read on Ash Wednesday. As the children of Israel wander in the desert, seemingly quite lost, they ask: “Can God set a table in the wilderness?” I love the bit in the story of the exodus when the children of Israel tell Moses they would prefer to go back and be slaves because the table was set for them in Egypt with cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions, garlic. (It does sound kind of delicious.)

Whether we find ourselves in some version of the wilderness, or whether our lives unfold in the presence of those who trouble us, here’s a question we might want to ask: Is God able to meet us there? Is God able to provide for us there? To set a table for us?

These days, we certainly may feel that our lives unfold in the presence of those who trouble us. General anxiety in this political season is one place that can happen. I suspect we all have situations in life, in family, at work that place us in proximity to people who make our lives difficult. Maybe we would wish for miraculous deliverance, the nearest exit. A favorite cartoon shows a business man with attache case standing in some desolate, mountainous place. The headline of the cartoon: A voice cries in the wilderness. The man is screaming: Get me out of the wilderness!

The witness of scripture is that it is precisely in the place of challenge that the table is set for us, where we can find nourishment. Can we claim that promise? Have you ever had that experience? Our faith is put to the test as we are called to believe that can happen. I can only attest to the number of stories (biblical and more contemporary) of faithful people who have sensed peace and provision in the most challenging places.

And if we can join the psalmist in affirming the gift of a table set for us, that’s just the beginning. Let me repeat what I cited last week from Bishop Henry Parsley: What is given is given to be given again. If Teresa of Avila was right (and she was pretty smart), Christ has no hands or feet on earth but ours. We are invited, indeed challenged to extend that holy hospitality to those we meet. To set the table for them, in Jesus’ name.

Sometimes the secular world teaches us how to do that. On my “religious” bookshelf, I keep a copy of Danny Meyer’s book, Setting the Table. Mr. Meyer is a remarkably successful restaurateur. I have no idea if he has any religious affiliation, but he has taught me as much about hospitality as any church program. Funny how learning comes from unexpected sources. As a quite successful businessman, he has made hospitality his guiding light. In the introduction to his book, he writes: “What really challenges me to get up and go to work every day…is my deep conviction about the intense human drive to provide and receive hospitality- well beyond the world of restaurants. Within moments of being born, most babies find themselves receiving the first four gifts of life: eye contact, a smile, a hug, and some food…That first time may be the purest hospitality transaction we’ll ever have, and it’s not much of a surprise that we’ll crave those gifts for the rest of our lives.”

I could quote more but it’s Monday morning and you’ve got a day ahead. The point is that God is all about hospitality, setting a table for us, even in the most challenging experience, then calling us to do that for others, in a world of wilderness. How has the table been set for you? How will you set the table for those you meet this week?

–Jay Sidebotham

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RenewalWorks: Helping churches focus on spiritual growth

RenewalWorks is about re-orienting your parish around spiritual growth. And by spiritual growth – we mean growing in love of God and neighbor.

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The earth is the Lord’s

The heat of summer can be harder on the unhoused than the cold of winter. During one August heat wave, a rector opened his air-cooled church to those who lived on the streets, allowing them rest in the sacred space. Not everyone thought this was a good idea. One established parishioner approached the rector and said: “I don’t like all these people in my church!” to which the somewhat courageous rector responded: “Ma’am, this is not your church. This is not my church. This is God’s church.”

The earth is the Lord’s all that is in it.

Speaking of summer heat, the warming of the earth, felt by all regardless of national boundary, represents an inconvenience for some but tragic hardship for many. Climate change is due in part from a sense that we as human occupants of this planet can do whatever we want with the planet. It’s ours to mess with. Or is it?

The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it.

I grew up in a religious tradition that derived great energy from figuring out who was in and who was out. My own spiritual journey unfolds in recovery from that kind of toxic spirituality. The dynamic is not unique to my tradition. Religious folks of all sort try to define boundaries of their communities on the basis of good doctrine, good works or good taste. They abandon the notion of human family, feeling better about themselves because some other group is excluded. Current political discourse echoes that, e.g., the ascendancy of Christian nationalism. We might do well to reflect on Psalm 24:

The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it.

As individuals, a big part of the journey of faith is thinking about what we do with what we’ve been given. What does ownership look like? Many of us have been born into privilege (a goodly number of us in this country). While many of us have been born on third base, we may give in to the tempting imagination that we have hit a home run. That is not to diminish accomplishment or perseverance. But our faith tells us that all is gift. Even our skill, our accomplishments, our perseverance as well as our prosperity is to be seen as gift. In other words, they belong not to us but to God.

The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it.

If all is gift, what is our response? If we see all that we are and all that we have as gracious gift from God, it could make us feel diminished. So much of our culture depends on the model that we deserve what we have because we earned it. We worked hard for it. That can provide glimmers of satisfaction. It can also make us really tired. And it can make us lose our way, as we confuse ourselves as creation with the creator.

There is freedom in embracing the notion that all is gift, that the earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it. As we embrace that notion, we may find the freedom to reflect that grace to a grace-starved world. Mentor and friend, Bishop Henry Parsley has stated it this way: What is given is given to be given again. That grace-filled approach can open our eyes to God’s activity in all of life. From Howard Thurman: If God is the creator of all things, then all things are in candidacy for his high and holy end.

Give thanks today for the beauty of God’s creation. Give thanks for the gift of God’s church, the body of Christ. Give thanks that even though we human beings are a diverse bunch, we are all children of God, made in the image of God. Give thanks for all good gifts around us as we reflect on what it means that the earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it.

-Jay Sidebotham

Interested in RenewalWorks for your parish? Learn more about how RenewalWorks works!

RenewalWorks: Helping churches focus on spiritual growth

RenewalWorks is about re-orienting your parish around spiritual growth. And by spiritual growth – we mean growing in love of God and neighbor.

Churches can launch as part of a fall or spring cohort or go on their own schedule. (Now accepting signups for Fall 2024 cohort)  Sign up now!

Have you had enough?

Sometimes I get the impression that the psalmist was watching cable news. Again and again, there’s timeliness and timelessness in that ancient poetry. Case in point: the psalm that appeared in the lectionary for yesterday, a psalm printed above. It includes this line:

We have had more than enough of contempt.

I’m inclined to respond: You can say that again. It is not simply the language of candidates who seem to find political success in unbridled expressions of contempt. It’s a broader trend in our culture.

David Brooks wrote an article for the Atlantic magazine (September 2023) in which he addressed two questions. First: Why have Americans become so sad? The rising rates of depression have been well publicized, as have rising deaths of despair from drugs, alcohol, and suicide. More than half of all Americans say no one knows them well. The percentage of high-school students who report “persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness” shot up from 26 percent in 2009 to 44 percent in 2021.

The kind of sadness Brooks describes leads to his second related question: Why have Americans become so mean? He’s not just talking about politicians. He cites a restaurant owner who said he has to eject a customer from his restaurant for rude or cruel behavior once a week—something that never used to happen. A head nurse at a hospital told Brooks that staff are leaving the profession because patients have become so abusive. Hate crimes rose in 2020 to their highest level in 12 years. Social trust is plummeting. In 2000, two-thirds of American households gave to charity; in 2018, fewer than half did. Brooks says: “We’re enmeshed in some sort of emotional, relational, and spiritual crisis, and it undergirds our political dysfunction and the general crisis of our democracy. What is going on?”

The advent of social media is no help, as people express contemptuous thoughts in ways they would never share in person.

One of the challenges is that contempt breeds contempt. I realize I can’t control what other people say or do. I can only work on myself. But here’s the rub: I want to answer contempt with contempt. My response to expressions of contempt, especially from politicians and cult-like followers, is to think and convey contemptible thoughts. I need help here folks.

Let me go deeper in my quandary. Contempt is no stranger to church life. I have often thought about writing a book on why it is that Christians can be so mean. Folks that speak a lot about grace often seem to have a hard time showing it. As Gandhi noted: I like your Christ but not your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.

I’m holding out hope that the antidote to contempt can be found in a closer look at Jesus. A closer walk with Jesus.

Look at what Jesus taught. In the Sermon on the Mount, he made the point that an angry (contemptible) thought, for instance calling someone a fool, comes from the same place as murder. It’s a matter of the heart. He asked disciples to think about where their hearts are. He called for people to forgive each other, breaking the contempt cycle. It’s a call for a new heart, a clean heart.

Look at what Jesus did. When met with the most virulent contempt that resulted in his arrest, torture and death, he extended grace and forgiveness. I’ve never faced contempt like that. As a Jesus follower, could I follow him in this regard?

Look at what it means to be part of his community, part of the Jesus movement. We find a way to break the cycle of contempt as we make promises in baptism. In that liturgy, we commit to respect the dignity of every human being as we strive for justice and peace. I wonder this: Can respect overcome contempt? It’s not easy. It may be one of the ways Jesus spoke about a narrow path. But it may just break the cycle. And then it frees us to work for justice and peace, to address contemptible acts (e.g., recent judgments to criminalize homelessness) with the way of love.

If you agree with David Brooks that life has just gotten meaner, think this week about how you can show another way. What would Jesus, our teacher, have us learn? How can we break the cycle?

-Jay Sidebotham

Interested in RenewalWorks for your parish? Learn more about how RenewalWorks works!

RenewalWorks: Helping churches focus on spiritual growth

RenewalWorks is about re-orienting your parish around spiritual growth. And by spiritual growth – we mean growing in love of God and neighbor.

Churches can launch as part of a fall or spring cohort or go on their own schedule. (Now accepting signups for Fall 2024 cohort)  Sign up now!

Okay

If a quote were to be attributed to John Lennon, Oscar Wilde, Paul Coelho, and Patel, the hotel manager in the movie “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel,” you might think it’s worth considering. Here’s the quote:

“Everything will be okay in the end. If it’s not okay, it’s not the end.”

What do you think? Worth considering?

No need to quarrel over authorship because the fact of the matter is that these wise sources may all have been reading Psalm 30, included above. Perhaps you heard it in church yesterday. That psalm makes the point in a variety of ways that life is a mix of things that are okay and things that are not okay.

It speaks of God restoring life on the way to the grave. It speaks of weeping in the night followed by joy in the morning. It speaks of short-lived wrath and eternal favor. Wailing is turned into dancing. Sackcloth becomes a garment of joy. You get the idea. It reflects the truth of our lives which are a mix, only navigable because of the ancient promise of Julian of Norwich: All shall be well and all manner of things shall be well.

We face all kinds of reasons why Julian’s hope is not yet realized. Biblical scholars have indicated that our lives unfold in the midst of the not yet and the already. It’s why hope is such an important virtue in the Christian faith. There’s no denying that life can be hard. But as people of faith we are encouraged to believe that the challenges are not the last word.

The challenges are not only external circumstances we face. They can be observed in ourselves. We are not yet all that we should be. A friend of mine, really smart guy, spent most of his life as an atheist/agnostic. A serious student of philosophy, religious faith made no sense. We talked a fair amount about his questions, doubts, concerns. But in his thirties, he came to make a commitment to the Christian faith. One day in our conversations, he shared his creed. He said that he had figured out what the gospel is. He said it sounds like this: I’m not okay. You’re not okay. And that’s okay. His affirmation that it’s all okay was an expression of confidence in the mercy of God, the confidence that grace bats last.

It’s a variation on what Psalm 30 had to tell us, perhaps captured in the bumper sticker that hung on my office wall: PBPGINFWMY (Please be patient. God is not finished with me yet.)

As we’ve noted previously, the psalmist asks us to recognize that a lot of life is about waiting. What are practices you have developed that help you do that? Maybe this week you’re dealing with circumstances that are not okay, that are not well. Maybe it’s difficult to see how it could all work out. (Don’t even get me started on the news!) Our prayer as I write this is that we can move through these circumstances in confidence that they are not the final word. They do not have final say, thanks be to God

-Jay Sidebotham

Interested in RenewalWorks for your parish? Learn more about how RenewalWorks works!

RenewalWorks: Helping churches focus on spiritual growth

RenewalWorks is about re-orienting your parish around spiritual growth. And by spiritual growth – we mean growing in love of God and neighbor.

Churches can launch as part of a fall or spring cohort or go on their own schedule. (Now accepting signups for Fall 2024 cohort)  Sign up now!

How Pleasant…

The psalm says: O how good and pleasant it is when kindred live in unity (Psalm 133:1, NRSV). Please note that the psalm speaks about unity. Not uniformity. Not unanimity. Not even agreement. Which is one of the things I love about church (on a good day).

It’s one of the things I love about a community that tries to keep worship at the center. Churches that aim in that direction allow space for all God’s people to come together. Churches that aim in that direction mean that we can sit in a pew or come to the altar rail with people who differ from us. We can all be fed and even united in worship. It happens when we keep God as the center, when we point beyond ourselves and each other to Jesus.

On June 9, David French, conservative Christian, wrote an op-ed in the N.Y. Times about how he had been canceled by his church because of his own challenge to the political agenda of that particular church. He said that race and politics trumped truth and grace. Not very pleasant. Tom Alberti has written an important book called The Kingdom, The Power and the Glory. The book details the ways that the evangelical movement has become intertwined with one political (and divisive) brand, and how pastors who questioned that development have been ostracized. Not very pleasant. Social media provides daily evidence of thuggish behavior of Christians on the left and right, behavior that insists on uniformity at the expense of unity. Not very pleasant.

This insistence on agreement is nothing new in the church. A mentor told me early on that the Bible is really just a story of sibling rivalry, kindred having a hard time getting along. It starts in the first chapters of Genesis as Cain and Abel disagree, a conflict which ended in murder because Cain was upset about the way Abel worshipped. In other words, it was a church fight, a deadly fight over liturgy.

Earliest documents in the New Testament, written or attributed to St. Paul, speak of challenges that came to congregations when people insisted on agreement on all kinds of issues. Paul gets a bad rap when people think of him as rule-based or intransigent. Maybe he had those moments, but in finer moments, he said that he would be all things to all people. Not that he stood for nothing, but that he recognized that the unity of the community was the best reflection of God’s love, the best reflection of God’s activity in the world. So when people were making all kinds of rules about who could be part of the community, who needed to follow rules or else, Paul said that neither circumcision nor uncircumcision mattered. What mattered was a new creation, a community in which there was neither Jew nor Gentile, slave nor free, male nor female. (If he were writing today, what might he add to that list? Neither Republican nor Democrat? Neither High Church nor Low Church? Neither Fox nor MSNBC? Neither Tarheel nor Blue Devil?) Paul describes a radical vision of community that the church has never been fully able to realize.

The Episcopal Church meets this week in General Convention. Every three years, it’s a big old family reunion. Keep that gathering of kindred in your prayers. There’s plenty of opportunity for sibling rivalry. It’s a diverse group. A variety of opinions on all kinds of matters will be floating around. It’s doubtful there will be complete agreement, unanimity, uniformity. But the convention can be a witness to the possibility of unity. That possibility has been enhanced by the graceful leadership of Michael Curry who winds up 9 years of service this week. He has brought us together by insisting on keeping love at the center, echoing the refrain that if it’s not about love it’s not about God.

Coincidentally, today (June 24) is the Feast of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist. It’s no accident that his birth comes near the summer solstice, when days begin to shorten. (Have you noticed that happening already?) Compare and contrast to the Feast of the Nativity of Our Lord (a.k.a., Christmas), at which point days begin to lengthen. It’s the church calendar at work, illustrating the words of John the Baptist who said of Jesus: He must increase and I must decrease. John the Baptist, shown often in Christian art pointing to Jesus, teaches us about Christian unity by modeling a spirit of humility, a focus on worship, pointing beyond himself.

In partisan times, the church has opportunity to model unity, a rare commodity in our culture. In what ways can you participate in that witness this week, in your family, in your church, in your workplace, in your neighborhood, in the wider community?

-Jay Sidebotham

Interested in RenewalWorks for your parish? Learn more about how RenewalWorks works!

RenewalWorks: Helping churches focus on spiritual growth

RenewalWorks is about re-orienting your parish around spiritual growth. And by spiritual growth – we mean growing in love of God and neighbor.

Churches can launch as part of a fall or spring cohort or go on their own schedule. (Now accepting signups for Fall 2024 cohort)  Sign up now!

What are you waiting for?

-Jay Sidebotham

Interested in RenewalWorks for your parish? Learn more about how RenewalWorks works!

RenewalWorks: Helping churches focus on spiritual growth

RenewalWorks is about re-orienting your parish around spiritual growth. And by spiritual growth – we mean growing in love of God and neighbor.

Churches can launch as part of a fall or spring cohort or go on their own schedule. (Now accepting signups for Fall 2024 cohort)  Sign up now!

What are you waiting for?

Here’s one of my favorite questions to ask Episcopalians: When in your life have you experienced what you would call spiritual growth?

And then there’s a follow-up: What caused that growth to happen? While I can only go on anecdotal response, I will say that there is one answer that comes up most often, no matter what group I’m talking to.

People say that they experienced spiritual growth in a time of crisis, maybe when they hit bottom, maybe when they had exhausted every other course of remedy. That might well be the experience of the psalmist as conveyed in Psalm 30, which you may have heard in church yesterday. (Included above)

Take a look in the spiritual rear-view mirror this Monday morning and think about when you experienced spiritual growth, a deepening of your relationship with God and neighbor. Were you, like the psalmist, crying to God out of the depths? Maybe that’s how you’re feeling this Monday morning.

The psalm tells us that as we call to God from that particular place, there is no guarantee of a quick fix. We are called to wait for the Lord. Left to my own devices, that’s not my favorite thing to do. Do you know the prayer of St. Augustine as a youngster? He prayed: Give me chastity, but not yet. I have a flip side to that: Give me patience, and I want it now.

Waiting can be hard, whether we wait in line in a store, in traffic, or on the tarmac. On a deeper level, waiting can be hard as we wait for word from a college admissions office, or from a potential employer, or a doctor. Where do you experience this challenge? And how do you meet the challenge?

Waiting is an exercise in trust. It may take practice to believe that all will be well, that all manner of things shall be well, as Julian of Norwich reminded us. It calls us to focus on our relationship with a living God, and to recall how God has acted in the past.

Waiting is an exercise in gratitude. As we practice an attitude of gratitude, we find space to be in the moment, grateful for the ways that God has acted in the past.

Waiting is an exercise in hope. Last week, one of the great theologians of our time died at the age of 98. Jurgen Moltmann, no stranger to the cruelties of modern politics, guided a countless number of Christians with a theology of hope. As we give thanks for his life, ministry and witness, consider these reflections on hope which speak about waiting. He speaks about how we wait for the Lord, and how the Lord waits for us at the same time:

“But the ultimate reason for our hope is not to be found at all in what we want, wish for and wait for; the ultimate reason is that we are wanted and wished for and waited for. What is it that awaits us? Does anything await us at all, or are we alone? Whenever we base our hope on trust in the divine mystery, we feel deep down in our hearts: there is someone who is waiting for you, who is hoping for you, who believes in you. We are waited for as the prodigal son in the parable is waited for by his father. We are accepted and received, as a mother takes her children into her arms and comforts them. God is our last hope because we are God’s first love.”

God is our last hope because we are God’s first love. Dare we believe that?

The saying goes: patience is a virtue. St. Paul goes deeper, telling us that it is a fruit of the spirit, a gift. May this week be an occasion to grow in appreciation of that gift, and in understanding what it means to wait for the Lord, even as the Lord waits for us.

-Jay Sidebotham

Interested in RenewalWorks for your parish? Learn more about how RenewalWorks works!

RenewalWorks: Helping churches focus on spiritual growth

RenewalWorks is about re-orienting your parish around spiritual growth. And by spiritual growth – we mean growing in love of God and neighbor.

Churches can launch as part of a fall or spring cohort or go on their own schedule. (Now accepting signups for Fall 2024 cohort)  Sign up now!

Memorize Psalm 139. It will change your life.

That’s what the Rev. James Forbes said to incoming students as part of our seminary’s orientation process, lo these several years ago. A good chunk of that psalm was read yesterday in church (see above). Every time it pops up in the lectionary, I think of that counsel from Dr. Forbes, who taught at the seminary and went on to be Senior Pastor at the Riverside Church in New York. I did my best to memorize it then, figuring he knew what he was talking about. I’ve often pondered why he picked this of all the psalms, indeed all the passages in scripture that might have chosen for our fledgling group.

The psalm says a lot about who we are, as it celebrates the mystery of the transcendent nature of God, broader than the measure of the mind, and as it celebrates our relationship to the Holy One.

For starters, the psalm reminds us (as if we needed it) that we are limited. It is just possible that we have grander visions of ourselves than are due. Dwight Zscheile, one of my teachers, says that a job of the church is to see what God is up to in the neighborhood. Too often in Christian history, Christians have behaved as if they are bringing God to places God couldn’t go without some help. We might even imagine that God is lucky to have us on the team. Where would God be without us?

Psalm 139 helps us see that God is in all things, present with us, surrounding us, preceding us, guiding us into a new future. That leads to an appropriate sense of humility. At the same time, it provides a comforting notion that there is a guiding hand in our increasingly chaotic world. Howard Thurman said that if God is the creator of all things, then all things are in candidacy for God’s high and holy end. Thurman may well have been channeling the psalmist.

In my own devotions in the morning, I often have to start by remembering that the coming day unfolds in the presence of God. It’s why the prayer from Psalm 19 is so important: “May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in thy sight.” I too often fancy myself a bit of a free agent. A friend recently gave me a postcard which reads: “Dear God, I’ve penciled you in for Sunday morning.” Ever felt like that? Psalm 139 calls us to recognize that in the limits of our humanity, humility before the God of all creation is the proper and holy response.

Second, the psalm reminds us that we are known. That can be a frightening thought, actually. I would not want my inner most thoughts projected on a screen. It would not be edifying, and it might be a career ender. The psalm tells us that God knows all about us, our sitting and rising, our innermost thoughts, all the words we utter.

Third, and perhaps most critical, the psalm says that while we are limited, and while we are known by God, we are also loved. It may be hard to see God’s love as unconditional, since so many of our human relationships proceed in a transactional way. Have you ever felt that if the people who love you knew some of your darker thoughts, or if they knew some things about the past, that your relationship would be off? The psalm says that we are known by the Holy One in ways that surpass even our own self-awareness. We are loved nonetheless. If that’s not amazing grace, I don’t know what is.

We are limited, for sure, and a recognition of that is key. It leads to holy humility in the presence of a power greater than ourselves.

We are known. There are no secrets to be kept from the Holy One.

And in it all we are loved, with a love from which we can never be separated.

Dr. Forbes was on to something. The embrace of those facts about ourselves can change our lives.

-Jay Sidebotham

Interested in RenewalWorks for your parish? Learn more about how RenewalWorks works!

RenewalWorks: Helping churches focus on spiritual growth

RenewalWorks is about re-orienting your parish around spiritual growth. And by spiritual growth – we mean growing in love of God and neighbor.

Churches can launch as part of a fall or spring cohort or go on their own schedule. (Now accepting signups for Fall 2024 cohort)  Sign up now!